


ouroboros

by NerumiH



Category: Vocaloid
Genre: F/M, Hitoshizuku and Yama, Nemesis of the Lost Kingdom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 12:12:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6984589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NerumiH/pseuds/NerumiH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of another battle between their long-warring kingdoms, the Len turns to Rin's palace to try and mend two promises that they broke: they are orchestrating the war, and they have left each other behind.</p><p>– Nemesis of the Ruined Kingdom. Len/Rin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ouroboros

**Author's Note:**

> request fill for a songfic <3

The enemy king is led to the table by her guards. There is no hesitation to the way he neatly slips into the ornate chair at the other end, so far away from her that it feels like nothing, yet, has changed.

The way he is watching her so coolly convinces her of this further.

“Your Majesty,” he says, touching a hand to his chest.

“Enough of that.” The queen lays her hands in a prim steeple on the table and regards him, just as tepid, just as analytical. He has doubtlessly changed in all but how he holds himself; the waves of time have not eroded him but instead caulked him in mineral, gems, pearls, stone. His jaw is squared, nose aquiline and sharp, hair just as unruly as it has always been. She says with an acknowledging tilt of the head, “I do not wish to create the fanciful narrative that we do not know each other.”

Something passes behind his eyes, melting the sharp edges of his stare. His hand unconsciously opens on the table, like waiting for her to take it, but she is too far. He breathes as if the words take a great strength from him: “Rin, then.”

She opens her hand on the table, too.

“My dearest, dearest Len. How the loom of fate does spin.”

**.x.**

_It is raining._

_A blistering rain that breaks through her skin, catching wickedly in her eyelashes and making her see spinning crystals as she tries to work. Their fingers keep knocking together as they tear into the dirt. Small, clawed hands. They rattle as cold as bones when they touch._

_He doubles over in the dirt; the heavy weight of exhaustion snaps its whip against his back. It is punishment, but it is not a demand to stop. Their exhaustion motivates, because they must always tap into the last shreds of their muscle and soul to use the bit of energy that separates ‘exhausted’ from ‘dead.’_

_“Len,” she whispers, wiping her dripping nose with her sleeve. “Len, get up.”_

_He drags himself off of his elbows as if pulled unwillingly by the throat; his body shakes hard, spastic. Mud laced in red drenches his arms and clothing. His hair, soaked, sticks to his face, pouring water down the twitching muscle in his clenching jaw._

_She digs her nails into his wrist and urges him back to the grave. “Do not stop,” she hisses. “We are not leaving them out here for the enemy to steal. We will not let the bodies become the battlefield.”_

_He wastes energy yanking out of her grasp. A sob wracks up his chest, but no sound comes from him. She feels the tiniest sting of guilt, but it is nothing compared to the destruction that sits in this immense field. In this infinitum of wreckage, of bloodshed, of horror._

_She hisses, “This is their right.” She looks to the pit they are digging. “They deserve funeral rites. For their deaths to be noticed, mourned. If their families are gone with them – if their families will never mourn, then it is up to us.”_

_She takes his wrist again, but something convinces her to slip her hand into his instead. She links their fingers. The hazy moonlight pours over their dirty skin, cut with rocks and the shrapnel of broken blades, rain slicing through the filth like tears. She tugs on his hand to make him look with her – look far, far away, beyond the field and beyond the moon itself, to the shadow of a castle encroaching in the darkness._

_She whispers, “If **they** will never mourn, then it is up to us.”_

**.x.**

She takes him to the gardens for a walk after they eat. He has gotten quite tall, standing well above her shoulder, and she watches the warm, oily light of the sunset glow under his jaw. For the first time her girlish imagination abandons her and she feels comfortable calling him a man. It’s been more than a decade that they haven’t seen each other, and walking with him feels no stranger than it did in those days when their hands were clasped together.

She says, “I never imagined you as a king, my Len.”

“A lie,” he retorts with a soft smile. “You used to torture me with fantasies of that.”

She laughs airily. “You dare bring up such embarrassing things to an old friend?”

“I dare.” His expression flicks into the innocent malignity of a smirk; that, too, is familiar. “You loved discussing what life with me would be like once we grew up. Our wedding portrait, our renovations to this gaudy place, all the dances you would hold…”

Rin laughs genuinely this time. “All the dances _together_ …” She looks up at him and he is watching her in his admiring way. She sighs around the words, “But love is fickle, isn’t it…It led you to another woman.”

“ _Love_ is fickle, indeed, and also a generous term for her and I’s alliance.”

“Yes…Miku, is it? She controls a powerful…ah, _army_ , as far as I understand. Now why, _why_ , my dear Len, would you need such a thing?”

The softness freezes over. A satisfied fire blooms in her smile.

They stroll past the roses and he is looking away; his face glows again, a king in hues of gold. Len says with great measure, “I wish to…revisit the past, if you’ll excuse me.”

“What part of it?”

“The part that, I think, has frightened you into this castle.”

She smirks forcibly, fire collapsing into angry embers.

He says, “We made a promise, Rin. One that meant more than the one of you marrying me. You remember it, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“We were going to finish our ancestors’ wars.”

“A beautiful fantasy of children,” Rin hisses.

“We were not children – not then. We had forgotten how to be children.” He still refuses to look at her, but his glare into the horizon is sharpening. “There is no time for fantasies when we were gathering corpses of the innocent, Rin.”

“We knew only their deaths. We could not understand the truth of the situation. We were children playing with corpses like toys, making up stories.”

He says a little louder, “I only want you to make peace with me, Rin. We both need to stop. Let our countries live without fear. We can make an agreement and both survive.”

“No.” She shakes her head, scoffing. A louder voice, that of her demanding younger self who would never hesitate to throw a punch or else a barrage of cruel words, is pressing inside her head. She locks her jaw and continues. “ _Now_ , you know more about politics and the nuances of war. There is not one simple agreement that we can make to stop this, even if it is children who cry for it. Do not be a fool, my Len, or else you will have disappointed me. You are still a child to think that we can discuss this.”

He does not press the subject.

Love is fickle, indeed.

And hers is absolutely rotten.

**.x.**

She sips wine with him in the salon, their chaises turned towards a window as tall as a church steeple. They watch as, beyond the hills, smoke unfurls to the sky.

“I sent them to the border keep,” she says conversationally. “If only you were there to order your men deeper within the walls. Having all your defense at the front lines is like wielding a shield before a blouse.”

He watches out the window, glass under his chin, and says nothing.

**.x.**

“I have lost someone,” he says.

She lifts her head at him in noncommittal questioning. They stand outside the guest room as her servants turn it down for him.

“To this war. A friend of mine, serving as a general.”

“Well, that was simply poor planning in finding friends on your part.”

He sourly laughs. His gaze drifts to the window at the end of the hall. He is always looking so far away. “I had forgotten the true impact of it all. In having to deal with so many trivialities of my royal life, I abandoned my empathy.”

“There is only so much of yourself that you can give, after all.”

He nods slowly, expression bemusedly thoughtful. “We were once very empathetic, were we not?”

A rigidity spreads across her shoulders. “No. It was fear. We were very fearful.” She follows the line of his gaze to the horizon, where the sun has been concealed completely. The sky is haloed in smoke. “Where others find selfishness when they are afraid, we found each other.”

The servants file out, bowing on the way. She turns to the door and says, “Now, will you allow a lady to accompany you in your chambers for a moment?”

**.x.**

“You wish for me to speak of how we will act in our war, do you not?” she asks, sitting on the edge of his bed. He is busy closing the curtains, enveloping them in whispering darkness.

“Rin...”

“ _My_ part in our war.”

She sees the silhouette of him slip before the bed, too far to touch her.

She whispers, “It has hurt you beyond the loss of your friend. I do not forget these details, Len. You have always been closer than me to the people, the danger, the hurt. You acted from your heart. _I_ acted out of duty and out of love for you.”

“A lie,” he says again. This time, it is sharper but she easily waves the needles away from their trajectory to her heart.

“You may believe that, but I have had long to reflect on myself.” She hears him slip to the chair beside the bed. “However, I have realised something very painful in this war, too.”

“What is it?”

“The people…and us, once, Len…they believe that the war does not touch those in their palaces. The war does not pass our walls, for we are too ignorant, too spoiled…too strong.”

“They are wrong,” he breathes.

“They believe that the war happens without us, because we do not feel the blades.” She finds the catch of soft moonlight on his hands, intertwined together on his lap. “But our war is not without us.”

“It is within us.”

She touches his hand. “Yes, my darling, dearest Len.”

He takes her hand in return. His thumb massages small circles on her knuckles; his fingers are soft. His body begs him to forget it all by becoming what it was before this all happened. To live anew, but he refuses.

For her sake.

As if he feels safer in the dark, he moves to the edge to the bed. The mattress dips under her when he rests a knee outside her hip. He draws their linked hands to her heart, and slowly opens his fingers to brush against the seam of her collar. He presses close to her, not yet touching, but his presence eases her back in unsaid demand until she’s lowering herself beneath him, his breath against her mouth.

She smoothly removes her hand from his. "What is this?" she whispers bemusedly.

"I missed you more than anything," he answers, and the words have drifted from him like water pulling in against the shore, a certain, graceful swell, but frigid. “I am sorry we meet again under these circumstances.”

She touches his face and smiles sadly. His jaw melts under her touch, breath shallowing against her mouth; he lifts her by the small of her back, the rustle of fabrics deafening in the dark. Even quieter than that, the softest of sounds against his skin, she murmurs, “I am sorry, too.”

He slips onto his elbows, and awaits there, hovering inches from her face. The blue of his eyes catches the feeblest of light, or else exudes it: crystal and silver, as gentle as silk, as subdued as the trained measure to his heart under her fingertips.

“What do you want me to admit?” she breathes. Her thumb brushes against his bottom lip, full and soft. “Would it not be poetic for me to admit it all… That I wish not for any of this, the war of my bloodline is locking me in chains, my will shattered to all but the grudge of my ancestors… Would it not be beautiful for me to whisper that to you while we make love?”

She cups his face and he says nothing.

“I have nothing to admit, Len. I remember all, and I regret none of it, but that is not me. I am not that girl…not entirely.”

“What about her feelings for me?”

“Hm?”

“Do you feel for me the way that girl did?”

She smiles; ever the sentimental, ever the empathetic, ever the closest. She draws him to her and he gasps into the kiss, slanting his head to deepen it – ever the eager.

She realises quickly that this kiss is nothing more than _him_ and not her, skilled and slightly rough, his movements eerily measured. He's rehearsed this to himself. He's always been an awful actor - but maybe that young girl who was so intent on protecting him would have let her adoration trick her into believing him.

But to this queen, beautiful as he is, his attempt unlocks nothing in her.

And it's frightening.

"Len," she murmurs against his lips as she gently pushes him back. She snickers breathily. "Go on. You have a wife."

He gives a small sigh that implies that he's been occupied by that thought too, and runs his fingers through the fanned locks at the back of her head. He lifts her just enough to press his forehead against hers.

He whispers, "You remember what we went through, don’t you? Be honest. Do you remember it all?"

"Of course I do. How can I ever forget? We were closer to death than the dead, themselves." She pieces his long hair over his shoulder, cool between her fingers. "War broke us, but faith in this cause, now, has rebuilt me."

He grits his teeth. "You've lost yourself."

She smiles sadly, but before she can really own that expression, something worse splinters it apart. The words emerge in its wake, hard and sharp, "I did not start this war alone."

She shoves him off and, surprisingly, he helps her up, though she is now seething and twitches out of his grasp. "One nation does not make a war. Need I remind you that you did not simply rise to the _defense_? Where are my men, Len? Where are my people? Dead as yours."

He watches her, and as far away as she is pushing him, he is becoming unreadable. She mutters, "Your heart is as black as mine."

**.x.**

He writes a letter to his beautiful wife the next morning. What she understands from that is that he is here to stay, and that he will not relinquish in trying to fix one of his biggest mistakes.

His pettiest mistake.

When she was little, she'd held his hand in the sunlight and said, "I will always love you."

"Me, too."

"Do you promise?"

"I promise I won't love anyone else."

"I promise I won't, either."

And then many years later she married a prince from a neutral kingdom and it was a happy union; he liked to smile and was very gentle and considerate, and often spoke of children. He gave in to sickness three years ago. She's twenty-six, now, an ancient crone by any picky man's terms, and so she doesn't care to marry again.

She's holding up her country in time of war. That says far more about her quality than the beauty of her face.

**.x.**

The countries are not far and the horses are swift, especially when she allows permission for the entrance of enemy post. His wife's response is fairly brief. Rin receives it first and so she reads it.

_'Allen,_

_I am terribly sorry to hear that negotiations are not proceeding well. It is written in our pasts, I suppose; the kingdoms may never meet in harmony. You are a very persuasive man, however, and so I believe in your ability to sway a wicked queen's ways._

_I have sent your instructions to the guard. Operations will commence on the date you penned. I’m sorry we will be apart for so long, but if I promise to you that I will be safe, then promise me that you are also safe, and also being honest._

_With all my love and condolences,_

_Miku.'_

She steps into his room and throws it on his desk. "Love letters and declarations of peace," she spits, "do not often come with plans of attack."

"I am not going to let my country fall while you continue to delude yourself," he returns evenly.

"You break every promise you have." Rin approaches him, and he does not break stance, like a cliff wall to a wave. But all stones erode with time...and pressure. "And you will break one more, here. Ha! Did you assure her that you were being faithful? _Honest_ , she said – she suspects your motives."

He takes a deep breath, slow enough that she can measure how it shudders. "I will break one promise, but I will mend another."

She sneers. "Do you think that by you finally fulfilling _yours_ of loving me, I will fulfill mine of stopping the war?"

"No – " He takes her hand and she doesn't fight it, his gaze like rough waters. "I don't. Rin, please. We need to step down together.”

" _You're_ deluded.”

"Don't fulfill it, then. Let us all die, if you think you can finally end this – "

She snarls, "I will end this by _winning_."

"You know what winning it will involve, do you not?"

A silence swallows up the room. His hand is gentle in hers, cupping loosely around her fingers.

She licks her lips and tries to think of something to retort, but he's caught her. He's caught her being foolish, because now it crawls out of the depths of her mind like an ugly creature – memories of them seeing her grandfather beheaded, his mother beaten in the town square like the old revolutions. The battles, knocking out the pegs of the resistance. Of the power. Spilling more of the blood they thirst, but never all of it...never enough to be quenched.

She whispers, "I am strong enough to kill you."

He breathes a shaking laugh. "And I, sweet Rin, am not."

He backs her into the bureau and presses his lips to hers; the fantasies have rattled her and so his alluring persuasion slips through the cracks, filling the kiss with a warm passion, the touch of his hands with a genuine concern. She eases his mouth open and their breaths braid in between, hot, intermingling, skipping on the gasp she can't help but utter. His tongue traces her bottom lip - the way he is pressing clumsily, desperately against her... It dares to sing to her that maybe her perception of his honesty was not wrong.

He is not trying to manipulate...not completely. Not like the first time, where all was gentle and steady and soft. She matches the painting of his tongue and he shudders when they meet, like he's never kissed like this before. She knows that isn't true. But it's the first time he's kissed _her_.

He lifts her up on the bureau to meet his height more comfortably. His hands are gentle, graceful, running through her hair and fluttering along her jaw and cupping through the layers of her clothes, sending shivers down her spine as he forces heat by the press of his hands against her shoulder, collar, breast, hip. She grabs his shirt and drags her to him. They're losing breath in the kiss and she's never been so eager to have a second's respite from it all.

And their fortresses crumbling around them in clothing and skin and the kiss of sweat she realizes that she cannot do this...not all of it.

She has never wanted him to die.

But she knows she wants to win. If she cannot spill his blood of the feud, then she will have to make it disappear.

**.x.**

She walks her fingers down his thigh, water dripping from each little step in slow, shiny rivulets that reflect the glow of the room on his skin. He pieces her hair over her shoulder and sinks her deeper into the bathwater. Slowly, his hips leading hers down from behind, until the warmth ripples around her chest and she can lay back against him.

She murmurs, posing her fingers in a steeple on his knee, “I have not lied to you once since this all began, Len.”

He traces his fingers up her stomach, carefully splaying them to match the curve of each rib. Her hair fans out where it touches the water like acrylics clouding off the tip of a brush. He doesn’t reply, trying to egg her on with silence.

So she adds, “And I will not lie now. I did not love my husband.”

“Nor I, my wife.”

She hums. His body is warmer than the water against her back. “The people mistake our marriages, too. _I_ used to. I wondered how awful people could fall in love – but they do not. They just make believe. I did the same for years. And it didn’t hurt all that badly. It became so routine.”

Rin eases herself around and grips the rim of the bath to slide up his chest and meet him in a brief kiss. Like she’s far more naïve than she really is, her heart is beating shallowly at the conception of her next words; but in comparison to what is going on outside the castle, it seems so trivial and pathetic.

She says, forcing herself to look into his eyes, “You do not feel routine to me, Len. You do not feel like a hallucination of what I think I should feel.” Her fingers smooth back his blonde hair, revealing his face that she recognises so well – gems, pearls, stone, again.

She whispers, “You feel like conflict and damage and pain, and also something so pretty that there are not words.”

And besides all her poetry he is the first to say it, spilling from his mouth into hers as he arches up to kiss her again, “I love you.”

It feels like a blade in her gut.

And so she doesn’t say it back.

Her fingers slip past his chin and down the muscles of his chest, and her thumb brushes over the thick, mottled scars. She remembers this; she remembers everything. She remembers every second of horror. Of not knowing if today would be the day they were wrenched apart.

And one day, they were.

Someone stole him from her and that was the last she’d seen of her Len, of her hero, of the one who kept every single promise.

She surfaces from the kiss and makes sure he hears, “But this does not change anything.”

He cannot win with war, and so he tries with love – but she is less relenting.

**.x.**

They have two maps of their countries open on the table, pawns in hand like old warlords. They read and inspect; he moves behind her, hand circling her waist perfunctorily, the corset and dress between the weight of his touch and her smooth skin an utter mockery. She is uncertain with how familiar she has become with the touch, heat, size of him. She feels as if she knows the very core of him.

He moves away. He says, his long-fingered hand over his map, “Do not let your army spread North. The people here are poor and cannot recover and will not bring you any glory.”

She calmly lays down a few coin-shaped chips in the arc that he indicates, then taps a finger on her own kingdom’s relief. “As with here, the crown city. It would be a shame for you to inadvertently lock yourself into the enemy’s territory, would it not?”

He makes the according adjustments to the map and then writes on a parchment, noting the new instructions. Her eyes scan over her kingdom – it is only names and illustrations. Soulless in comparison to the world she sees. No character celebrating all that her family has done for it. All that they have so far kept safe, and that she must protect, too.

She says, “And you will let the dead return home.”

He does not question it. He remembers it as well as she; men being stolen even as corpses, being burned, hung for display by the enemy.

“I will write them tonight.”

**.x.**

_The attack spreads with a vengeance, as rampant as a plague, and as vociferous as a hurricane. She stands with him at the peak of the hill and they watch the great hoard of men on horseback encroach upon the walls._

_The city is surrounded. They are trapped within the kiln of high walls and their own suffocating supplication._

_The soldiers come holding torches high, the fire whipping a ghastly red and silver in the light. Their shields are emblazoned with the same crest that rests primly above her mother’s throne, and on a necklace that hides within her coat._

_She is not them. Seeing them doesn’t hurt her as much as it should._

_This time, he takes her hand first._

**.x.**

A few weeks pass. War reports come regularly, none shocking her, until this one.

The meeting is very quiet. The messenger’s recitation bury heavily into her, chiselling away her stoic expression with a rusty pick. The words start to flow over her head. Breached. Broken. Dead. He’s pervaded too far into her territory, cities ash in his wake. Irretrievable men, their bodies stolen and burned by the enemy like in the old, cruel stories, good men unable to return home even when their souls are the most free.

She thanks him. Redirects him to her assistants on the battle. Slips from the table, her hands shaking, and finds Len in the study as if nothing has even happened.

She spits, “Do you do this to challenge me?”

He looks up. She recalls the letter from his wife – negotiations, indeed. Medieval, ungodly negotiations.

He stands. He looks, again, like he’s made of stone. A coldness passes behind his eyes.

“You cannot explain this new cruelty?” she barks. “This ignorance?!”

“I will not let my country go defenseless,” he repeats from before. She doesn’t want to explain again to him what he’s done – he’s more selfish than she thought. She strides towards him, fury flaring, and the flash of the rain in the battlefields a thick sheen in her gaze upon him.

He asks, his voice icy, “Did the actions of my men remind you of something, Rin?”

“Enough. Do not lie to me anymore,” she snarls, glaring up at him. “Do not sugar your intentions. The conditions you want are not peace; you outright betraying my orders is proof enough.” She pushes forwards until their chests brush. “You want surrender. You said on the first day that you wanted survival for both sides. But that is not true, is it?!”

He squares his jaw. Does not even try to deny.

“You’ve lied to me since the beginning. You want to take everything from me.”

Her hand grips his lapel and he lets her push him backwards, the edge of his chair knocking in his knees and he lowers himself with all the calmness of a king so used to lounging above people, so used to simpering, so used to dressing sympathies and lies over his heartlessness.

“Surrender – I can see why you demand it, Len. The blood may cease to flow if I give in. You will be safe. Your people will have new land, new foreigners to rape and ruin. You cannot kill your wife and marry me and stop this war, so instead, all you ask of me…just this small _favour_ …you ask me to calmly step down and let you win.

“To this I ask, why me, and not you? Why do you ask _me_ to drop my kingdom to its knees? Is it not far nobler to step down, yourself?”

She sneers, the expression shaking with anger. “I will not surrender to your niceties. I will not surrender to your love. I will not surrender to your kingdom’s _fear_. I will not bow to anything less than what I deserve from you. If you want compliance from me…”

She grips his chin and lurches his face up to see her. She hisses, “Beg.”

He tries to pull from her grip; she digs in her nails and repeats lowly, “Drop to your knees and _beg me_.”

His gaze holds level with hers; she has wanted to think so far that the one with ice in their veins is her, but now she isn’t sure. A dark curdling of betrayal stirs in her stomach. _He’s sick_ , she thinks with a strange fury. _He’s sick._

“Go on,” she prompts, and he carefully begins to slide off the chaise and to the floor.

A smirk flicks at the corner of her mouth. She lets him go and allows him some space; he sinks to his knees with what looks like great difficulty, every inch squaring his shoulders and hopelessly trying to forge his dignity another layer of armor. One knee down, and then the other, slow. Maybe waiting for her to retract her order. She keeps silent.

He stares hard at the hem of her skirt. The image of him, wearing his finest kingly clothes and bowed to her feet, gives her a great thrill. She says, “Yes, Len?”

He doesn’t say anything. And she wonders if maybe he regrets his morbid instructions to his men, in that long, long moment.

“Rin,” he whispers hoarsely. “I – “

“I am not Rin to you.”

“…Your Majesty.”

“Correct.”

His hands tense at his knees. “Do not let the fight continue. Do not support my irrationality, my inferiority, by letting this go on any further. Do not push me.”

“Forgive me, Len, but this sounds a little like a threat.”

He sighs. “I am asking you…to let the war end. I am already here to give up. I ask for you to do the same. Do not let this happen again.”

“Let what happen?”

A beat passes. “…What we have already lived through. Seeing people we love – watching them die. Men being forgotten. Memories burned into nothing… We should not allow people to lose so much. We cannot lose – “ He swallows. “We cannot lose each other again.”

He sinks a little further to the floor, head bowed deeply. “I have been cruel, I know, and I recall – I recall more than anyone how that war destroyed us. _We_ recall. We hold their memories, as we promised. We remembered and we mourned where the kingdoms forgot, and here we are again, wanting to forget, so instead of hurting, we can triumph. I am very sorry. I’m sorry. But I cannot surrender alone. I cannot stop this alone.”

She waits. He takes a great, quivering sigh, and repeats the words he knows she wants to hear: “I’m sorry for letting this happen again. And for coming here. But I need you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I cannot defend myself forever against you. We both need to stop it. Please, Rin.” His voice is shaking. “Please.”

She holds out a hand. It takes him a second to notice, but then he carefully accepts it like he’s afraid she’ll sear him through his glove, and brushes his lips over her knuckles. In the past few days they’ve shared more skin and viscera than she’d ever imagined, and yet this feels the most intimate and the most important.

Her fingers unfurl around his chin and lift his head up again. His eyes are much, much quieter. They are eyes of a man who wouldn’t be making this war. Eyes of a man who is afraid of losing everything, again, and who is so close to telling her he loves her, as if that will work.

She shakes her head and smiles down at him. “You should return home, Len. Your men will need you.”

**.x.**

He is gone before nightfall. She walks around her empty castle, the smell of smoke permanently hanging in the air; he has left her a small note that burns in her fingers.

_You have abandoned me, and so I must abandon you. But I will not do the same to my people._

_I have always fought for them. Even when all I could do was bury corpses. I will not stop doing so now. Hopefully we will find each other again._

_Len._

She sits by those beautiful windows that open to the great borders of their countries. She closes her eyes and the thin imprint of the view is stitched on the inside of her eyelids, but spattered with a thick red that drenches the mud, trickles through the grass, rain pouring upon the backs of two children, shivering in the cold.

**.**

**.**

**.**

_“Len, please. Please breathe, okay? They are gone.” She rests a hand on his stomach, away from the wound, where he can feel. “The danger is gone. We can rest now.”_

_She eases him onto her lap as gently as she can. A muscle strains in his neck, bleaching his pallor even further like marble. Carved. The rope of muscle in the throat of David, arched, strong, holding his head high to protect all he regards._

_She whispers, “We can take care of each other now.”_

_She finishes ripping through his shirt and shoves it open; his entire stomach is painted in black. Mottled and thick and streams running free around his ribs, violently crimson in some places, diluted by the rain in others like it’s nothing more than watercolours. She wrenches off her shawl and bundles it up. The rain is very, very cold._

_“Breathe, Len,” she says, and he twists into the dirt._ He is in pain _, comes to her mind very patiently._ You’ve failed him.

_He utters a soft scream when she presses the fabric against his skin. He clutches her arm. She feels every finger, and every fibre in how his hands shudder. His breathing is wet and quick and shallow, the rain snapping past his lips in bubbles, but she wonders if he even knows it’s raining._

_As she leans over him to add pressure, a necklace slips out of her collar; it swings hypnotically, taunting. The emblem of her kingdom – of the war – barely glistens in the dim light. She shoves it away and tries to find Len’s gaze. He is worth so much more than their battle. He always will be._

_“I will not bury you here.”_

**.x.**

She is flanked by the captain of the guard, the two of them atop proud white horses, reins of braided navy thread in her gloved hands. Behind them, she feels the great presence of her army – they are in perfect silence, powerful iron sentries, but their strength rears up behind her like the awe of standing before a mountain.

The field between her army and his is yellowed like parchment, hard like stone beneath the hooves as it has been trampled so many times. They all stand above the foundations of ancient blood and bone, and it’s beginning to rain again.

He cannot abandon his people, and neither can she. She cannot let the deaths of her family before her – of all the men and women and children before her – go unnoticed, unhonoured. And she’s learned by now that the way to honour them is not to settle in silence and in quiet kisses and old, meaningless pacts.

She turns her face up to the sky, the sword heavy in her hand; water runs clear over her face, but the frigidity cannot penetrate her armor. A necklace seals against her chest, wearing the crest of her kingdom.

Of her war.

She opens her eyes and lifts her sword to him across the field. After a beat, he does the same, his grip powerful, the wet sunlight bleeding along his armor and turning him to a king of gold.


End file.
